Title: Space in Language and Cognition
Subtitle: Explorations in Cognitive Diversity
Series Title: Language Culture and Cognition, 5
Publication Year: 2003
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
http://www.cup.org
Book URL: http://us.cambridge.org/titles/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521011965
Availability: Available
Author: Stephen C. Levinson, Max Planck Institute for
Psycholinguistics
Paperback: ISBN: 0521011965, Pages: 414, Price: U.S.: 24
Paperback: ISBN: 0521011965, Pages: 414, Price: U.K.: 17.95
Abstract:
Languages differ in how they describe space, and such differences
between languages can be used to explore the relation between language
and thought. This book shows that even in a core cognitive domain like
spatial thinking, language influences how people think, memorize and
reason about spatial relations and directions. After outlining a
typology of spatial coordinate systems in language and cognition, it
is shown that not all languages use all types, and that non-linguistic
cognition mirrors the systems available in the local language. The
book reports on collaborative, interdisciplinary research, involving
anthropologists, linguists and psychologists, conducted in many
languages and cultures around the world, which establishes this robust
correlation. The overall results suggest that most current thinking in
the cognitive sciences underestimates the transformative power of
language on thinking. The book will be of interest to linguists,
psychologists, anthropologists and philosophers, and especially to
students of spatial cognition.
Preface
1. The intellectual background: two millenia of Western ideas about
spatial thinking
2. Frames of reference
3. Linguistic diversity
4. Absolute minds: glimpses into two cultures
5. Diversity in mind: methods and results from a cross-linguistic
sample
6. Beyond language: frames of reference in wayfinding and pointing
7. Language and thought.
Lingfield(s): Cognitive Science
Philosophy of Language
Psycholinguistics
Written In: English (Language Code: English)
See this book announcement on our website:
http://linguistlist.org/get-book.html?BookID=7931

Title: Language from the Body
Subtitle: Iconicity and Metaphor in American Sign Language
Publication Year: 2003
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
http://www.cup.org
Book URL: http://us.cambridge.org/titles/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521770629
Availability: Available
Author: Sarah F. Taub, Gallaudet University, Washington DC
Hardback: ISBN: 0521770629, Pages: 272, Price: U.S.: 58
Hardback: ISBN: 0521770629, Pages: 272, Price: U.K.: 42.50
Abstract:
What is the role of meaning in linguistic theory? Generative linguists
have severely limited the influence of meaning, claiming that language
is not affected by other cognitive processes and that semantics does
not influence linguistic form. Conversely, cognitivist and
functionalist linguists believe that meaning pervades and motivates
all levels of linguistic structure. This dispute can now be resolved
conclusively by evidence from signed languages. Signed languages are
full of iconic linguistic items: words, inflections, and even
syntactic constructions with structural similarities between their
physical form and their referents' form. Iconic items can have
concrete meanings and also abstract meanings through conceptual
metaphors. Language from the Body rebuts the generativist linguistic
theories which separate form and meaning and asserts that iconicity
can only be described in a cognitivist framework where meaning can
influence form.
"Language from the Body will capture the imagination of all readers
who are fascinated with the human language capacity. I expect the
book to stand as one of the groundbreaking works on sign language, in
a line with Klima and Bellugi's The Signs of Language, which opened
the field to modern investigation over twenty years ago."
-Dan I. Slobin, Department of Psychology, University of California,
Berkeley
"In my view, this is more than a major contribution to modern metaphor
theory, it's the most substantive advance towards a general account of
the nature of the linguistic sign since Saussure and Pierce.
Accessible, jargon-free, and yet full of scholarly depth, this book
should be read by linguists, cognitive scientists, and by anyone
intelligent who wants to know more about language and mind."
-Eve Sweetser, Department of Linguistics, University of California,
Berkeley
"Language from the Body presents an elegant and convincing analysis of
iconicity in language, a topic usually swept under the rug,
particularly by sign language linguists. This original and perceptive
book will be a valuable resource for both linguists and cognitive
scientists."
-Karen Emmorey, Laboratory for Cognitive Neuroscience, The Salk
Institute foy" Biological Studies
"This book is liberating. It frees ASL from attempts to make it look
as much as possible like spoken language and lets it be seen for the
magnificent and poetic instrument of expression and communication that
it is. In doing so, Taub changes the very idea of what a human
language can be."
-George Lakoff, co-author of Philosophy in the Flesh and Metaphors We
Live By
1. A glimpse of the material
2. Motivation and linguistic theory
3. Iconicity defined and demonstrated
4. The analogue-building model of linguistic iconicity
5. Survey of iconicity in signed and spoken languages
6. Metaphor in ASL: the double mapping
7. Many metaphors in a single sign
8. The vertical scale as source domain
9. Verb agreement paths in ASL
10. Complex superposition of metaphors in an ASL poem
11. The future of signed-language research.
Lingfield(s): Cognitive Science
Linguistic Theories
Pragmatics
Semantics
Subject Language(s): American Sign Language (Language Code: ASE)
Written In: English (Language Code: English)
See this book announcement on our website:
http://linguistlist.org/get-book.html?BookID=7843